August 25, 2009 · 10:27 am

Wal-Mart comes to the Wilderness

Despite protests from many historians, a Virginia county has approved the construction of a Wal-Marts near (or, depending on whom you believe, in) the site of the Civil War’s Wilderness battlefield. My great grandfather John Caldwell fought in at least one of the two battles here (I forget which, or whether it was both) and, wounded, was sent by train to Washington where he was treated and released back to battle, after being charged for his treatment. Modern day critics of the VA should consider how things have improved since then. But that said, it is a shame how development is slowly encroaching on all the battlefields of this war. We’ve long lost most of the Revolutionary battlefields, of course, but even a decade ago, many of the Civil War sites felt almost unchanged and were awesome places to visit. I’m not sure that will be offset by the benefits of buying a memorial T shirt from Sam.

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5 Responses to Wal-Mart comes to the Wilderness

  1. Cos Cobber
    August 25, 2009 at 10:57 am

    Oh come on CF, dont wuss out now. I thought you were a capitalist? Wars are about evolution and now the time come for the Walmart warship to unleash its capitalist economic willpower on Civil War relics. Its evolution baby.

  2. Anonymous
    August 25, 2009 at 11:06 am

    Would rather have a profit-generating, job-creating business use of land, rather than more taxpayer-subsidized preservation of museums which simply feed commie arguments for higher tax rates and more government jobs

  3. christopherfountain
    August 25, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    Anonymous, if it would help save your typing fingers, feel free to just send in blank comments from your ip – we all know exactly what you’ll say anyway.

  4. Riverside Dog Walker
    August 25, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    If you spend any time in the south, away from tourist or ‘northernized’ areas like Charlotte, you find that these people are still fighting the civil war. Truly mind boggling to me. The civil war sites have to feed this, though doubt they are the cause.

    If you spend time in Germany and Japan, it is very difficult to get those folks to talk about WWII. Difference is, they don’t think that was their country’s finest era, whereas the southerners would seem to prefer to live in 1850, with air conditioning.

  5. christopherfountain
    August 25, 2009 at 2:20 pm

    I don’t know about that, Rvsd – when I’ve visited these sites I’ve always found the visitors to be a mix of northerners and southerners and we all got along. Of course 100 years on, many people, myself included, are apt to have had ancestors who fought on both sides, but regardless, I don’t believe the battlefields themselves are to blame for any lingering animosity. More likely answer is that we Yankees can’t understand the locals’ mush-mouthed dialect and get impatient with them.